Lucid Dreaming - The Chronicles Pt. III review
| Band: | Lucid Dreaming |
| Album: | The Chronicles Pt. III |
| Style: | Power metal |
| Release date: | November 05, 2020 |
| A review by: | tominator |
01. Introduction
02. Open Wide The Gate
03. Born From The River
04. The Free Commots
05. Life Is A Forge
06. From Thread To Pattern
07. Dreams Come Alive
08. All Or Nothing
09. The Mirror
To be or not to be? No need for that question here. This should never have been in the first place...
Did you know that (pre-cut) cardboard boxes were invented in 1890? And who would have thought back then that they would also be used as a drumkit on a metal album? Actually no, scratch that, I'm pretty sure cardboard would have more punch to it than the drums on this record.
If you haven't guessed by now, I've got a few issues with the production of this album. It's a muddled mess and the drums are not the only problem. Guitars are as lifeless as Jeffrey Epstein, vocals are all over the place; and that place is rarely the right one. And, before I go further with the review, I can't point out enough that the production is the biggest failure out of all the things I'm going to mention. Like Adam Sandler sucks out all the comedy out of a film, so does the production suck all the energy (what little there is) out of the The Chronicles Pt. III. Simply put, on production alone this album is already doomed from the start.
Musically, this ranges from bad to derivative. Take the song "Open Wide The Gate" for example. If you heard the acoustic intro and thought to yourself: "Hang on a minute, I know that from somewhere", I wouldn't be surprised. It's "At Doom's Gate" played at 50% speed. Yes, that song from the opening level of DOOM. A song which already took inspiration from many other metal songs.
Now, on to the lyrics. Well, they exist... I think... Sometimes I was not entirely sure if they were actually singing existing words. I'm talking about vocal deliveries that sound like mumbling at times. The kind of mumbling you hear from a drunk guy who talks to himself on a public transport ride. And, like I said, the other vocals aren't much better. Occasionally there is some solid work, with the female vocals being the most obvious one. But some of the rest is just bafflingly bad at times. And if you are wondering about the rest of the lyrics other than the ones that get mumbled; those are of the predictable and often cheesy type. "Life Is A Forge" is easy to immediately point out as an example. The title itself should already be a clear indication of that.
There are moments where they try to deliver a catchy chorus. I say 'try', because again this is at its best predictable and derivative, while at its worst it's as painful as falling face-flat on a piece of concrete and scraping over it for a couple of meters.
The best thing about this record is the cover art. It was done by Felipe Machado Franco. He did artwork for bands like: Blind Guardian, Lords Of Black, Power Quest, InnerWish and the list goes on. A shame that a nice piece of artwork of his has been used for this frankly terrible album.
Honestly, I thought Six Feet Under's record this year would easily be the worst I've heard but I guess I was wrong. So, who is this album for? Well, if there is someone you really hate, give them this record as a present. That should be a clear message of what you think about them.
Rating breakdown
| Performance: | 3 |
| Songwriting: | 3 |
| Originality: | 2 |
| Production: | 2 |
 | Written on 28.11.2020 by You know I'm right, you just haven't realised it yet... |
Comments
| Nejde Posts: 1695  |
This review is hilarious. I was laughing hard through out. After that bashing I was thinking if it really can be that bad so I went to YouTube and listened to Open Wide the Gate. BIG mistake because it can and it is. It's horrible in every aspect, especially the vocals. Imo the 2,4 rating is way too generous. So maybe I'll send this as a christmas gift to my ex-wife.
---- Liebe ist für alle da.
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064  |
Written by Nejde on 28.11.2020 at 13:40 Glad you found it a fun read. Maybe my score is still on the generous side. But I can easily say that this is one of the worst albums I've heard. In fact I can only think of one right now that was worse than this. If somebody would tell me this is a torture device of the modern age, I'd believe them. I'm sure your ex-wife would be chuffed with a present like this. 
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| musclassia Staff Posts: 7693  |
Wow this is brutal. I did look it up and found Born From The River on youtube - wouldn't eviscerate it like you've done here but it was unfortunately rather flat, I see where you're coming from regarding the production.
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| Eternity'sChild Posts: 153 |
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| Roman Doez Hallucigenia Posts: 978  |
"Guitars are as lifeless as Jeffrey Epstein" -Tominator, 2020 This is a great review ! Really fun to read, I'm scared to listen to this album now
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| Nejde Posts: 1695 |
Written by tominator on 28.11.2020 at 13:56 Luckily I only listened to a minute or so. Unfortunately I can't get that minute or so back. Terrorists should be glad they closed Guantanamo because if they had put this on they would've begged them to put on Katy Perry or Lady Gaga again 
---- Liebe ist für alle da.
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
Written by Eternity'sChild on 28.11.2020 at 14:33 Songwriting wise, I can kinda agree there are moments where I felt like they tried a bit. "From Thread To Pattern" is probably the best one in that regard. I'm sure they had some ideas and that those could work if done correctly. But this is just done so terribly that it's just one painful ride.
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
Written by musclassia on 28.11.2020 at 13:58 Something which I didn't really mention in the review (because I had to cut out some of my rambling), is the length of the album. It's long and listening through the whole thing in one listen is a chore. And that also influenced my rating quite a bit. If it were a 30 - 40 minute album, I might have disliked it slightly less. But this is a 60+ minute album. The final track itself is over 15 minutes long! It's a bad album. One that gets dragged out so much that it makes everything even worse.
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| Lanthros Posts: 585 |
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
Written by Lanthros on 28.11.2020 at 15:52 You've only just started. Still got 1 hour, 5 minutes and 44 seconds to go. 
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| RaduP CertifiedHipster Staff Posts: 9063  |
Quote: So secretly alive?
---- Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking One day there will be no heart at all?
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| Troy Killjoy perfunctionist Staff Posts: 21306  |
I was curious to see how much you were exaggerating so I attempted to listen to two songs and just wow. Horrible in every way. I think a 2 is fair -- it doesn't quite reach Lulu levels for me, but that also has to do with the fact that it was made by professionals and veterans of the scene. This is just straight up amateur hour. He's obviously in need of vocal coaching as he shows no control over his tone, power, enunciation, or cadence; and he really needs to spend some money on proper recording software instead of using whatever free to use garbage he downloaded the weekend he decided to write this album. This is one of the lowest effort, least creative, cringey releases I've ever heard. Not sure it deserves the "so bad it's good" label, but I'll try to go from start to finish and see if it gives me more secondhand embarrassment than it does reasons to laugh. Thanks for appropriately lambasting this and for mentioning the comparative dumpster fire that is SFU -- although I'll have to bump their 2020 release to a 3 due to the blatantly higher quality songwriting.
---- "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
Written by RaduP on 28.11.2020 at 16:11 That's the thing. It sounds like there's no life in them. Yet subconciously, you're fairly sure that somewhere it's alive and hiding somewhere.
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
Written by Troy Killjoy on 28.11.2020 at 16:14 I never thought, I'd have to agree with a comment which said something like "higher quality songwriting by SFU". But here we are. 2020 is full of (bad) surprises.
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| nikarg Staff Posts: 7399  |
I was listening to the album while proofreading the review late last night. I thought the same as almost everyone who commented: "he must be exaggerating, it cannot be that bad". But it is that bad. I laughed a lot while reading it, it is very funny and very accurate, and I loved the metaphors. I probably listened to half the album and it is godawful, the vocals and the production are the worst.
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| Archie 666 Posts: 317  |
I only listened to it because of the review and OMG, LOL and even ROTFL.
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| Ansercanagicus endangered bird Posts: 589  |
I just wanna state that most of the times when an album has bad production, people complain that the song sucks and musicians suck and the singer is bad etc... I just think that people don't realise what really is production and how much it impacts the music they hear. You could take 9/10 albums with good prod and isolate some stems and find out they are sloppy/ridiculous/exagerated... In this case the prod is absolute crap, yes, and some (most of the) parts sound sloppy and badly executed, while it's not an absolute reality. It's just an effect of bad production. I wouldn't give so low rating on the performance, songwriting and originality. You have a scale with criteria, please use them well. It would be more 6/5/5/2
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| Lanthros Posts: 585 |
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| Starvynth i c deaf people Staff Posts: 3189  |
Congrats on this entertaining review! Now please confess that this was all you ever wanted and proceed with reviewing music worth listening to.
---- signatures = SPAM
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
Written by Ansercanagicus on 28.11.2020 at 18:43 Fair enough if you would give i that. Though at the same time, I've done that in the past with my review of Avantasia's Ghostlights. Giving scores to the different criteria and the overall score was pretty different from it. Then I had people asking me why there's such a big difference between the scores and asking if I could count. I mean I guess there's no right way to scoring. But I still stand by the scoring I've given to the different criteria. In the end if parts sound sloppy and badly executed what score can you give the performance? I think it's easy to point at one of the criteria as the main culprit. But like I said, I can only judge what I hear. If the performances sound sloppy then I give a score that I think represents that. Originality is another one of those things. When an album has no original bone in its body but has solidexecution, it gets a 5 or 6 from me. This doesn't do that, hence the low score. Same goes for the songwriting part.
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| RaduP CertifiedHipster Staff Posts: 9063 |
Written by Troy Killjoy on 28.11.2020 at 16:14 This was the most surprising part for me, looking at the person behind the project and the guests involved, all of them being of bands of some notoriety, even if I didn't really listen to some of them, but this in no way should be as bad as it is.
---- Do you think if the heart keeps on shrinking One day there will be no heart at all?
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
Written by Lanthros on 28.11.2020 at 18:51 Hmmm... fair point...
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| MetalManic Posts: 654  |
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| Gothic Metalhead Pro Introvert Posts: 146  |
I'm actually listening to this now because I'm curious as to how bad this really is... So far it's all over the place with its vocals and guitars... I'm only on track 2 as of writing the vocal work is pretty bad...
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| PēterisP Posts: 91  |
I listened to Born from the River on youtube. I just was curious about what shall be done to get rating less than 3. And I heard nothing but regular s%%% - the same as Symphony X, Stratovarius and other power metal acts. Oh, yeah power metal never gets more than 2 from me when it comes to rating DDDD
---- Metalhead since 1987
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| Troy Killjoy perfunctionist Staff Posts: 21306 |
Written by PēterisP on 30.11.2020 at 21:30 I myself avoid power metal for the simple fact that I could probably never bring myself to throw anything higher than a 6 at even its most lauded works, but if you can't tell the difference between this and Symphony X, then your bias is out of control.
---- "Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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| Ball Fondlers Posts: 513  |
Very nice review  I listened to the 3rd song as it was the top one on youtube. It wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but still bad. The mixing around the vocals is so weird, if it wasn't for that it could almost be bearable. And I'd still rather listen to this guy than Tobias Sammet
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| tominator At best deranged Contributor Posts: 1064 |
Written by Ball Fondlers on 03.12.2020 at 10:35 Thanks! I'm not the biggest fan of Tobias' vocals either. But for me they range from bearable to ok (the production of his albums is usually pretty solid, which helps a lot). This though... is just a disaster imo. I'm still not sure whether this album was supposed to be a joke or not.
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